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Happy Birthday from New Zealand

Week 5



Happy Birthday to President Nelson. This is the conference room on our floor and some of the senior couples we serve with in the Area Office.  We gathered to watch the birthday celebration.  Afterwords, the Area Presidency arranged to sing him happy birthday, blow out candles on a birthday cake in his honor, and then we sent the video to the Prophet.  It was a wonderful tribute to our prophet and we loved taking the time to watch it together.   We don't know if we have explained this or not but our floor has the offices of Area Legal Council, Area Health Advisor, Area Mental Health Advisor, Area Auditing, the Area Presidency and Mission Leaders In-Field rep. There are 9 full-time employees and 9 senior missionary couples.  All the other floors of the Area Office are full-time paid employees.  This week we spent time on Press-kits, improving our media contacts, writing a couple of stories (one about a senior missionary fireside for the Pacific Area and the other about providing wheelchairs to those in need), working with radio and tv stations to air a General Conference ad, and coordinating a church history book release for NZ (More on that next week). 







We had some free time Saturday morning before our assignment to pick-up visiting missionaries at the airport, so we went to the Auckland NZ History Museum. It was great learning more about the history of New Zealand and the traditions and sacred events of the Maori people.   We are ever so slowly learning how to pronounce some of the names and locations.   You really have to be in love with vowels in order to say most of the words.   



Saturday night at a yummy Greek restaurant.   Our area has a couple serving in Papua New Guinea and one in Melbourne Australia.   They flew in for a conference this week.  He have 4 people from SLC here for training on some of the resources the church has available.   



This picture is to torture Stan and Michelle again in the Phillipines.😁 I can't help it. I finally arrived on the beach in time for a sunrise picture over the ocean. We are on the east side of NewZealand so we view beautiful sun rises and not sun sets.



This is my English connect class. I'm glad someone took a picture so I can review the names. They are all so earnest in their desire to learn. Their livelihood depends on it. We try to have one teacher on one side of the table for every 2 students on the other. I took a picture of the board so you could sympathized with me on the subject of our lesson...how do you teach diarrhea?😊
After our English lesson, a missionary stands and gives a 5 minute lesson about Jesus Christ. (Most are Chinese.)




I don't know if I can be trusted with my name tag. I am having a hard to remembering it, or losing it, or I even wore it upside down for half of a day. Who does that??? Nobody said anything. Either they were too embarrassed for me or no one noticed. I will choose number 2.





This is the ad that we are asking our members to post telling the world to watch General Conference. I have loved our study in Come Follow Me this week about the Lord's prophets. Sheri Dew gave an amazing talk at BYU Hawaii where she said,

 "Can you think of any journalist, talk-show host, celebrity, athlete, or politician you trust more than our prophet? How about any entrepreneur, billionaire, or scholar? Any YouTube celeb or star of stage, screen, or Netflix? I can’t. Each of these want something from us: our vote, money, or support. They all have personal agendas. Prophets of God do not. Their agenda is the Lord’s".

I am so grateful for a living prophet and that we have the opportunity to listen him in a couple of weeks.

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